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Since the interaction with immersive visualizations can be crucial to finding the desired information, this work seeks to explore the possibilities of improving this kind of interaction by providing tangible touch points in the form of drones. Not only is the tracking of the drones a vital aspect but also the finding of meaningful behavior that is applied to the drone after it has been touched and manipulated, is at the core of this work. After a prototype model has been found for interaction and drone response it will be tested and evaluated on various immersive visualizations by conducting a user study that is centered around the ease and amount of gaining of information.

Tasks:

• Literature research concerning tangible interaction with virtual reality visualizations especially focused on drone-interaction.
• Setting up and tracking a drone to act as a tangible point.
• Conducting of an evaluative user study integrating various visualizations.

Requirements:

• Basics in Unity 3D (C#) and 3D modeling.
• Interest in tangible VR-interaction.
• Plus: experience with three dimensional interaction concepts.

Details

We're looking for a practical research student for user research and UI design in the context of an interdisciplinary research project at the intersection of Physics, Biology, and Computer Science. You will be working as part of a team of researchers and students from these domains.

Tasks:

• UI design and information visualization: Employ a user-centered design process to design a touch-based UI for a portable measurement instrument for cell research, including aspects such as information visualization and measurement control.
• User research: Adequately inform the design choices by assessing and considering needs and preferences of a variety of target user groups.
• Prototyping: Create suitable prototypes for the user-centered design process and for presenting the developed designs to various stakeholders.
• A first design prototype and insights from user interviews exist to get you started.

Requirements:

• Interest in interdisciplinary work, innovative technology, and cell research
• Background in human-computer interaction, information visualization, and/or user interface design
• Practical experience with user-centered design processes and UI/UX design methods and tools
• Teamplayer, independent scientific work, creative problem solving

The project is initially offered as an “Einzelpraktikum” for Master students (Media Informatics, MCI) for one or two semesters (6/12 ECTS, respectively).

Interested?

Send your application with transcript of records and examples of your UI design work via email to Dr. Daniel Buschek.

Details

Effizienz ist ein wichtiger Faktor der Usabilityforschung. Im Allgemeinen beschreibt die Effizienz eines Systems den Aufwand, welchen ein Nutzer erbringen muss, um eine bestimmte Aufgabe zu erfüllen. Effizienz wird meist in Zeit gemessen und evaluiert.

Die wissensbasierte Authentifizierung (bspw. PIN) stellt ein Beispiel für eine solche Aufgabe dar. Als Maß der Effizienz dient hier in der Regel die Zeit, welche für die korrekte Eingabe eines Passwortes/PIN benötigt wird. Neue Erkenntnisse deuten jedoch darauf hin, dass es neben der aktiven Eingabe weitere Phasen gibt, welche sowohl die gemessene als auch die gefühlte Effizienz des Mechanismus beeinflussen. Dabei ist neben der reinen Existenz dieser Phasen auch das Verhältnis der Phasen zueinander maßgebend für die User Experience.

In diesem Einzelpraktikum soll der Einfluss der verschiedenen Authentifizierungsphasen auf die Effizienz untersucht werden. Dafür sollen mehrere Modifikationen eines PIN-Eingabesystems entwickelt und im Feldtest studiert werden.

Aufgaben:

1. Literaturrecherche / selbstständiges Aneignen von Fachwissen
2. Ausarbeitung der zu testenden Konzepte (im Team)
3. Entwicklung der Studiensoftware (Android oder iOS)
4. Planung und Durchführung der Nutzerstudie (im Team)
5. Analyse und Aufbereitung der Studienergebnisse

Bei Erfolg des Projektes besteht die Möglichkeit an einer internationalen Publikation mitzuwirken.

Details

Gaze-based head gestures are a hands-free interaction technique using the occulo-vestibular reflex. A bachelor thesis showed already that this interaction technique works for checking checkboxes and answering dialogs.
This thesis should research whether advanced interaction, such as drag & drop operations, using scrollbars and manipulation of 3D objects, is possible with gaze-based head gestures.

Tasks

• Get familiar with hardware and software
• Find and study related literature
• Develop software supporting the interaction method
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Details

The eye does smooth pursuit movements when following moving objects and such movements can be used for gaze-based interfaces. Typically the pursuit targets are generated by software. In contrast this thesis should research the detectibility of pursuit targets in a video.

Tasks

• Get familiar with hardware and software
• Find and study related literature
• Find or create royalty free videos with moving targets
• Develop software extracting target coordinates from the video and detect pursuit movements with the gaze coordinates given by the eye tracker
• Design a user study
• Conduct a user study
• Do a statistical evaluation
• Write all down in a thesis

Details

Description

In this project, we would like to explore how VR can be used to enhance Dance experiences. From a performer perspective, the VR setting may be used to further visualize movements for example. From the observer perspective, it would be interesting to see whether these enhancements are viewed simply on a digital screen or through an HMD as well. Can it happen synchronously or only one-after-the-other?

The aim of this thesis is to explore this topic.

Tasks

• Review of related work on performer/observer interactions in digitally enhanced social viewing/entertainment/public art viewing (e.g. festival, theater) situations
• Creating an application that tracks fully body movements of VR user
• Enhancing dance movements with a design space of visualizations
• Evaluating the viewing experience from a performer and observer perspective in a small study
• Analyze the data collected from the studies and build valid conclusions

Requirements

• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving
• Interest in performing user studies and experiments
• Interest in performing arts
• Interest in VR
• Good experience with c# 3D authoring tools (e.g.,Unity)

Details

Description

In this project, we would like to create a design space for usable security interactions in AR/VR that are also ergonomically appropriate.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how current interactions affect our body long-term and whether they need improvement.

Tasks

• Review of related work on VR/AR interactions from an ergonomic perspective
• Creating an application that tracks fully body movements of VR user
• Evaluating the long-term effect of VR/AR interactions on the 3D model
• Analyze the data collected from the studies and build valid conclusions

Requirements

• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving
• Interest in performing user studies and experiments
• Interest in VR
• Good experience with c# 3D authoring tools (e.g.,Unity)

Details

Description

HMDs are used in collaborative settings, whereby the HMD user is often confronted with real world users that are not actively participating in the virtual or augmented reality. We are interested how these two different sets of people (HMD users vs. real world users) interact with each other, for example during interruption.

Tasks

• Review of related work on collaboration/CSCW/VR/AR/Mixed working environments
• Developing a prototype of a virtual reality environment that tests a number of designs for controlling user interactions
• Conducting an in-depth investigation of the potential and challenges of a virtual environment in a collaborative setting
• Analyze the data collected from the studies and build valid conclusions

Requirements

• Independent scientific work and creative problem solving
• Interest in performing user studies and experiments
• Interest in VR
• Good / Very good experience with c# 3D authoring tools (e.g.,Unity)

Details

In highly automated driving, people are able to not care about driving tasks anymore. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of car interior concept showed the trend of combining bigger interactive screens with the physical car interior to offer novel infotainment system inside vehicles. Such concepts will offer more opportunities for users to deal with non-driving-related tasks such as relaxation or working on their way. However, the car interior with these screens of fixed position and size are neither within the reachable distance in terms of ergonomics, nor beneficial towards group conversation or multiusers. To address such problem, the goal of this research is to explore novel concepts of the car interior as tangible user interface for people wearing VR headset during autonomous driving.

Requirement

• Skills and experience of Unity
• Interest in automotive and tangible user interface

Details

Description

Mid-air gestures enable new and exciting ways of interacting with technology, especially because devices can be interacted with from a distance. Typically, gesturing follows the pointing metaphor, wherein one or both arms are extended to point towards the device, e.g., a display. However, a persistent problem is the expressive and novel nature of the interaction: users may feel uncomfortable gesturing in places wherein they receive unwanted attention. Additionally, prolonged gesturing can lead to fatigue.

The aim of this project is to investigate new approaches to gestural interaction that could make the interaction less visible and less tiresome. In particular, the aim is to investigate gestures that are carried out by holding the arm against the body, instead of reaching out with the arm.

Tasks

• Designing and implementing the overall logic for on-body gestures
• Implementing a prototype public display application
• Designing and conducting a user study

Requirements

• Interest in novel interaction techniques
• Interest in performing user studies
• Good programming skills

Details

Problem Statement

A stylus allows designers and artists to provide artistic digital designs. Modern tablets (Surface Pro, IPad) support a stylus, allowing users to design anywhere.

However, creating 3D models can be difficult on 2D displays. 3D modelling requires users to navigate a lot in 3D space - even for drawing simple 3D lines. This project investigates how this process can be more efficient. The idea of this project is to better merge the two processes of navigation and creation.

In this project, the goal is to explore new methods of 3D input in 2D design applications, by using both stylus and multitouch input of the user. The two main work-tasks will be 1) creating a basic drawing prototype with new interaction methods, and 2) to explore what kind of new interactions are possible.

Tasks

• Survey of related work
• Conceptual design of methods that allow users drawing of 3D sketches
• Design and implement a drawing application that integrates the methods
• Evaluation of the application in a user study
• Report of the project into the thesis

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge in the area of human computer interaction
• Interest in design, drawing, and artistry
• Experience in programming of 2D/3D GUI (E.g., Java processing)

Details

Problem Statement

Companies such as Oculus, Apple, or Microsoft are working on AR devices that may become an integral part in the daily life of the future. How the user interface may look like is still an open question, it may involve novel methods of input. In this project, we explore the use of eyes for interaction with the digital augmented information. How can the eyes be utilised to interact with digital information that are laid over the real world?

In general eye based interaction has been long investigated in the field of human-computer interaction. The eyes are one of the fastest input modalities, and work in unity with the user’s hands. Future AR devices, through glasses, have a high potential to have eye-tracking integrated and it is therefore imaginable that the eyes play an integral part in the interaction with the augmented reality.

The project is exploratory, and strongly focuses on the interaction design and building of prototypes. It involves iterative prototyping from basic ideas to mature user interfaces with close feedback rounds with the team (e.g., 1 or 2 times per week). It is also possible to get hands-on support on the implementation from team members. Ideas can be generated quickly with the team, and evaluated quickly with small prototypes. The goal is to create the most dynamic, fastest, and world-class user interface for AR. Inspirations can come from various media, e.g. Minority Report, IronMan, or Ready Player One.

Tasks

• Comprehensive survey of related work
• Setup of an AR device with integrated eye tracker (e.g., Hololens)
• Iterative development of the interaction concepts (with the team) and software prototypes (Unity c-sharp)
• Evaluation of final prototypes
• Analysis and report of study design

Preferred qualifications

• Interest UI design and Unity programming
• Scientific work and UI research
• Interest in novel input modalities and devices

Suggested reading

• Ken Pfeuffer, Jason Alexander, Ming Ki Chong, Yanxia Zhang, and Hans Gellersen. 2015. Gaze-Shifting: Direct-Indirect Input with Pen and Touch Modulated by Gaze. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology (UIST '15) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2807442.2807460
• Ken Pfeuffer, Benedikt Mayer, Diako Mardanbegi, and Hans Gellersen. 2017. Gaze + pinch interaction in virtual reality. In Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (SUI '17) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3131277.3132180
• Mikko Kytö, Barrett Ens, Thammathip Piumsomboon, Gun A. Lee, and Mark Billinghurst. 2018. Pinpointing: Precise Head- and Eye-Based Target Selection for Augmented Reality. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3173655

Details

Problem Statement

Virtual Reality is gaining more and more importance in our daily lives as we allow ourselves to be immersed in a simulated environment. Among its many useful application, VR can be used to carry out meetings among group of people or even be used in E-learning where the participants can be aided. Gatherings can also extend to examples such as 'Skype Session with family', 'Gathering with friends' etc. During such group meetings, where the environment is essentially a multi user environment involving interaction between participants, it is important that each participant can be completely immersed in the environment and for that, interaction and visualization techniques need to be developed. The aim of the thesis is to explore the interaction and visualization techniques for social gatherings.

Tasks

• Comprehensive survey of related work
• Get familiar with hardware and software
• Conceptual design of interaction and visual techniques between avatars that enhance the virtual immersion
• Carry out a initial survey using 'Oculus Go' to determine the necessary interaction features for enhancement
• Implementation of the design which successfully integrates the various interface design to enhance group communication in VR
• Evaluation of the design through a user study

Preferred (but not necessary) qualification

• Knowledge and interest about VR
• Able to work independently
• Unity Programming

Interested students should get in touch with Radiah Rivu (radiahrivu_at_gmail.com)

Details

Generative music systems are becoming more and more relevant nowadays. In the near future Artificial Intelligences will become evenly equal partners in music making scenarios. Therefore we have to find ways to interact with systems that are able to make their own decisions and have their own creative mind. Established communication with human musicians are eye-contact, gestures, verbal expressions.How can we communicate with digital musicians, how can they communicate with humans?

Tasks:

• Development of interaction concepts for the handling of AI/generative systems in a musical context.
• Implementation of a functional prototype that demonstrates the basic concept.
• Conducting a study with students.

Requirements:

• Interest and experience in music theory.
• Experience in programming and hardware-prototyping.
• Ambition to delve into hardware and software.

Suggested Reading:

• Yamaha Artificial Intelligence (AI) Transforms a Dancer into a Pianist
• Mateas, M. (2001). Expressive AI: A hybrid art and science practice. Leonardo, 34(2), 147-153.
• De Mantaras, R. L., & Arcos, J. L. (2002). AI and music: From composition to expressive performance. AI magazine, 23(3), 43.
• Francois, A. R., Chew, E., & Thurmond, D. (2007, June). Visual feedback in performer-machine interaction for musical improvisation. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on New interfaces for musical expression (pp. 277-280). ACM.

Details

User interfaces facilitate interaction with digital content. Concepts such as "Undo" make it possible to reverse actions that did not have the desired effect. But what would interfaces and the corresponding interactions look like if irreversible actions were central components of interaction design? In this thesis a design exploration should be performed that focusses on materials like paper which affordances lead to actions such as tearing, crumpling, folding, punching holes, etc.. How can familiar concepts such as punch cards or origami help to design intelligible interaction metaphors, that create commitment to the actions we as users perform with technology? What impact will such concepts have on prospective actions?

Tasks:

• Concept Development.
• Design Experimentations.
• Prototyping.
• Evaluation in form of a User Study.

Requirements:

• Prototyping Experience.
• Interest in Design and UX Design.

Suggested Reading:

• Zimmerman, John, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson. "Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI." Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2007.
• Auger, James. "Speculative design: crafting the speculation." Digital Creativity 24.1 (2013): 11-35.
• Cox, Anna L., et al. "Design frictions for mindful interactions: The case for microboundaries." Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2016.

Details

For more then 2500 years humans already practice the interaction with flying agents for hunting and caretaking tasks. Based on the metaphor of the falconer we want to implement a system which enables gaze control of drones utilizing a wearable eye-tracker. By taking the "looking at the watch"-pose, which is reminiscent of the "falconer luring its bird"-pose, the eye tracker gets implicitly positioned in front of the user's face. A combination of body posture and eye gaze allows for GUI-free interaction in the field and during physically demanding tasks. In this thesis a VR prototype should be implemented that is used to perform an user study evaluating the interaction metaphor.

Tasks:

• Design Concepts.
• VR Implementation.
• Evaluation in form of a User Study.

Requirements:

• VR/Unity Interest/Experience.
• Eye Tracking Interest.

Suggested Reading:

• Cauchard, Jessica R., Kevin Y. Zhai, and James A. Landay. "Drone & me: an exploration into natural human-drone interaction." Proceedings of the 2015 ACM international joint conference on pervasive and ubiquitous computing. ACM, 2015.
• Hansen, John Paulin, et al. "The use of gaze to control drones." Proceedings of the Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications. ACM, 2014.
• Fernández, Ramón A. Suárez, et al. "Natural user interfaces for human-drone multi-modal interaction." 2016 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS). IEEE, 2016.

Details



The internet changed the way we learn new languages, independent temporal factors, location, and budget. To increase motivation and engagement, learning applications often conduct a user personalization. Adapting the content has proven to be important due to the individuality of learning goals. Still, current language learning applications don't apply real personalization but let the user pick the most suitable contents.

In this Einzelprojekt, we want to investigate an approach to find gaps in user's second language vocabulary knowledge by analyzing physiological signals during media usage (watching english films with subtitles). In a user study we want to assess those signals from a medial grade EEG and an eye tracker. The data will be analyzed and evaluated to find features, which could be predictors for language understanding problems. These features are indicators, which help a cognition-aware system to identify words or sentences the user does not understand

Tasks:

1. Brief literature review on the use of EEG and eye tracking data to assess problems in language learning / understanding
2. Formulation of a concept / list of features relevant for language learning
3. Development of a study setup for testing languages
4. Design and execution of a user study
5. Analysis & evaluation of the study results

Requirements

1. Interest in physiological sensing techniques
2. Good / very good programming skills in the programming language Python and optionally Matlab
3. Experience in planning and conducting user studies

If this project is successful, you will get the chance to contribute to an international publication.

Details

Details

Description

Personalization is one of the biggest trends at the moment since it allows systems to target their users personally. Currently, personalization in HCI is often based on past user behavior, preferences, and interaction context. Personality traits, a concept of Psychology, could provide a promising additional source of information for personalization, which goes beyond context- and device-specific behavior and preferences. For example, Netflix users could get recommendations based on their personality or health app could provide information and decision support strategies based on personality.

However, which mental model do users have regarding the concept of personality? Are there universal negative and positive personality traits? What do users expect of personality-aware personalization and adaptation based on personality? Do users accept personality-aware adaptation?

It's possible that several students work on Bachelor's or Master's theses answering one of the questions mentioned above each.

Tasks

• Literature research regarding personality traits and personalization
• Develop a concept to answer one of the research questions mentioned above
• Implement the concept
• Evaluate the concept with an empirical HCI method

Minimum requirements

• Interested in personalization and psychological topics
• Previous experience in conducting user studies

Details

Description

Developing an Android app for predicting personality traits via smartphone usage

In the PhoneStudy project, an interdisciplinary team consisting of psychologists, statisticians, and computer scientists develop an Android app, which tracks and logs the user’s smartphone behaviour to predict personality traits. For example, we track the number of users’ calls, sms, and app usage, which might predict how extraverted the user is. The app will be distributed among participants in spring 2018, which will then use the app for several months. There are several tasks for media informatics students in this project (cf. below), from which you can choose. Please contact me when you are interested in the project and will give you more details.

Tasks

You can choose between different tasks:

• Configuring and working on the server, its scalability and stability, as well as the data base (MariaDB)
• Working on the internal web based front end of the server, which depicts the current status of participants and logged data
• Further develop the app: integrating new features and fixing current bug
• Quality management: Developing automatic testing scripts

Minimum requirements

• Interested in interdisciplinary projects
• High communication skills, especially willing to communicate interdisciplinary
• Able to work independently
• Previous experience with server configuration, (Android) app development, web development, data bases (depending on the chosen task)
• High frustration tolerance

Details

The intent and the steering behavior of the driver is important to prevent accidents on the highway. During the thesis you will collect driver information on the driving simulator and then use this data to predict the driver’s driving intent.

This thesis includes:

• Literature review
• Driving data collection with the simulation tool Carmaker or Unity and Head pose/Eye tracking with Tobii
• Evaluating the data to find the best features to predict driving behavior
The thesis might be written in English or German.
Details

In this thesis you will develop a driving instructor for semi-autonomous driving. In order to make the driver understand the full functionalities of a semi-autonomous car you will develop a system to support the driver.

This thesis includes:

• Literature review
• Developing strategies to communicate vehicle functions to the driver
• Validating the findings in a user study
The thesis might be written in English or German.
Details

Within machine learning algorithms uncertainties need to be communicated to the user in order to improve the understanding of the system. In semi-autonomous driving the user needs to understand the limits of the system. In this thesis you research the best strategy to communicate uncertainties to the driver.

This thesis includes:

• Literature review
• Developing strategies to communicate uncertainties to the driver
• Validating the findings in a user study
The thesis might be written in English or German.
Details

Within the project Providentia it is possible to inform the driver early on about traffic developments on the highway. Therefore, the difference between warnings and pre-warnings is interesting to be researched.

This thesis includes:

• Literature review
• - Testing the developed system with a user study
The thesis might be written in English or German.
Details